Monthly Archives: October 2018

Berlin, Cooking, health care, plant-based lifestyle, vegansim, vision

Choose vegan: Update #4

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Mixed salad topped with tempeh and vegan bacon fricassée

Well, I guess it’s been over three months now since I made the decision to become a vegan and I still have no regrets. I am still enjoying all the benefits and finding that the only disadvantage concerns the amount of time it takes to keep cooking two meals a day if the rest of your family are not vegans.

I am also still discovering new taste experiences from vegan bacon to liquid smoke and nutritional yeast and I have taken up jogging before I go to work in the morning. Although my sole motivation for becoming a vegan was animal welfare, the spin-off has been a loss of 3 kilos in 3 months and a renewed sense of fitness in body and mind.

In recent weeks, perhaps as the result of so many fatal and horrendous “natural disasters”, I have been stumbling across articles about how a plant-based life-style is essential for the protection of our environment.

Among the major issues we face in the modern day are climate change, dwindling natural resources, global health epidemics, and the inhumane treatment of animals. What do all of these problems have in common? Each one is intrinsically linked to, and largely driven by, our global society’s dependence on animal-sourced protein.

As developing nations have gained wealth and worldwide demand for meat and dairy has subsequently risen, the animal agriculture industry has mastered the art of producing animal products en masse in the cheapest, most “efficient” way possible.

As a direct result, the environment, our resources, and all life on earth are now in grave danger. In fact, our obsession with cheeseburgers and chicken wings has brought us into such a disastrous situation that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recently labelled meat as “the world’s most urgent problem.” And this is not an exaggeration.

Industrial animal agriculture is responsible for producing more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector combined. Not to mention this destructive industry is to blame for widespread air and water pollution, plus mass deforestation, all of which are threatening species around the world and rapidly advancing global warming and resultant climate change.

Given the magnitude of the problems associated with industrial meat and dairy production, scientific experts have emphasised that there is simply no way for us to meet the targets spelled out in the Paris Climate Agreement unless we significantly cut back the scale of animal agriculture on an international level. Global problems are never some one else’s responsibility.

I am delighted to say, however, that some global companies are moving in the right direction. Google, for example, has designed their cafeterias to be “plant-forward,” analysing consumer behaviour to encourage their employees (or as they say, users) to consume more plant-based foods and fewer animal products at meal times. And the Human Society of the US’s comprehensive Meatless Monday campaign that has helped 263 school districts provide meatless meals one day a week (and consequently eliminated close to 600,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions and saved the lives of 10.3 million land animals in just five years).  This is especially encouraging because we know that changing human behaviour starts with education, whether we’re talking about racial tolerance, understanding that religion is a social construct or animal welfare and protecting our environment.

Furthermore, promoting a plant-based life-style has been a taboo in schools for decades since parents quickly put a stop to it by claiming their children are being brainwashed by radical lefties and animal rights campaigners, an objection which is mainly based on parents not wanting to have to change their own diet and certainly not wanting to have to go to all the extra effort of preparing vegan meals for their children. This objection is certainly not based on empirical evidence or an education that tells the truth about human meat and dairy consumption. I can only hope that this will continue to change thanks to the people in HSUS, Peta and other such organisations.

So, my friends, stopping asking others why they have become vegans and start asking yourself why you are not.

Finally, if you’d like to see the videos that effected this radical change in my life, here they are again:

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”  Albert Einstein

Berlin, Children, God, society

“Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

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Addressing worshippers in the Vatican this week, Pope Francis said terminating a pregnancy was the equivalent of getting a hitman to “take out a human life to solve a problem.”

Not that this is anything new. During another preach, Pope Francis has said that abortion is “what the mafia does. It’s a crime. An absolute evil.”

Sarah Cartin, from the campaign group Christians for Choice, branded the Pope’s remarks “absurd”.

She told Sky News: “Pope Francis once again shows complete disdain for women by making absurd and inflammatory statements about abortion.”

And she’s right. How insanely insensitive such comments are for women who have been abused or raped? How dare this old man tell women what they should do with their bodies? His hypocrisy beggars belief. On several counts.

First, when Pope Francis preaches on such issues, he extremely rarely quotes the Bible. He bases his out-of-date and offensive remarks on his personal opinion and occasionally on the handed-down traditions of the Roman Catholic Church. What kind of spiritual leader proclaims the message of his beliefs, however erroneous, without at least quoting the sacred writings on which those beliefs are founded?

Secondly, how can Pope Francis, a man who leads an organisation best known for the systemic sexual torture of countless children worldwide, be heralded as anything other than a steward of hypocrisy is a testament to what people can get away with when they claim to be speaking for God. The insincerity one needs to promote progressive ideals while maintaining draconian practices, like those embedded inside the Catholic Church, is incalculable.

Thirdly,  where does this “knowledge” come from that proves that a human being exists from the moment that a sperm meets an egg? If an acorn is not an oak tree, why is a potential person already a person? In the Jewish religion, you become a person only from the moment of your first breath. For abortion to be labelled as the murder of a human being, the crucial scientific, legal and even biblical facts are categorically missing.

I am not against the notion of protecting the rights of the unborn, but it is not for a man to make imperative declarations or to pass laws on what women can or cannot do with their bodies. No man will ever know what it is like to have to control one’s fertility for over thirty years, let alone to carry a child for nine months, or to experience the pain of childbirth, or to take the major responsibility for the upbringing and care of another human being for the rest of one’s life. The decision to terminate a pregnancy belongs to the mother. Period.

“Abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it’s not a good idea to bring them into the world.”  Katha Pollitt

Berlin, Brexit, European Union, politics, society, vision

Having the time of your life, Mrs May?

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Especially from the perspective of a UK citizen living in Europe, this sabbati horribilis has been so embarrassing and depressing as the shambles of the Conservative Party conference took place in Birmingham.

The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, compares the European Union to a Soviet prison. Boris Johnson is photographed running through a field of wheat in order to mock the prime minister he is openly betraying.

To crown it all, yesterday we had Theresa May literally dancing on to the stage at the party conference to Abba’s “Dancing Queen.” So was wie peinlich! Quite apart from the fact that Theresa May had to resort to a European, non-British pop song for her cringe-worthy entrance, she chose the wrong one. Abba’s “SOS” would have course been far more appropriate, especially the opening lines: “Where are those happy days, they seem so hard to find, I tried to reach for you, but you have closed your mind …”

All Mrs May could do during her speech was to reflect on the past, to knock her political opponents and to make false promises about there being no further austerity after Brexit. There was no vision, no new policies that would help to move the nation forward, and no movement in her flawed Chequers plan that is splitting her party, the UK and the EU. Yet she boldly claimed, “Let’s say it loud and clear: Conservatives will always stand up for a politics that unites us rather than divides us.”

Can she seriously believe this nonsense? Given a solitary year of majority government for the first time in a quarter of a century, the Conservatives gave the nation the most divisive event that has happened to it in four hundred years, from which it remains entirely unclear how it is meant to recover.  

Mrs May also proudly reminded us that the Conservative party “will put into place a new immigration system that will allow businesses and universities to attract the brightest and best to the UK” whilst ensuring that all low-skilled workers from the European Union and elsewhere will be banned from setting foot on the sinking island.

How ironic and hypocritical, therefore, were Mrs May’s comments about the Conservatives being the only party to give opportunities to the nation. “To dream, and strive, and achieve a better life,” she said. “To know that if your dad arrived on a plane from Pakistan, you can become home secretary.”

Sajid Javid’s dad, an unskilled migrant who worked on the buses, would never be allowed into Britain under the new immigration policies proposed by Theresa May!

Her understanding of democracy is even more nefarious than her understanding of citizenship (see quotation below).

She dismissed talk of a second referendum, which “wouldn’t be a people’s vote, it would be a politicians’ vote, telling people they got it wrong the first time.”

In reality of course, a second referendum would be the people passing verdict on how the politicians have got on with handling the first people’s vote. And that means her. The current numbers suggest that that verdict would be damning. No wonder she can’t uphold what would amount to true democracy.

Ah, well, to my consolation, yesterday, “Der Tag der deutschen Einheit” (German Unity Day), I finally completed my application for German citizenship. Not because I am worried about the personal consequences of a predictably awful Brexit, but because I am ashamed to remain British.

“If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what citizenship means.” Theresa May.